Fantastic Fest returns to Austin with Resident Evil, a Walter Hill tribute and a GWAR send-off

Fantastic Fest returns to Austin September 17 through 24 for its 21st edition, with a lineup running past 100 features.

Opening night goes to Beware Boiúna, a creature feature from Mike P. Nelson having its world premiere. Nelson has been working in this space for a while now, and handing him the opening slot for a monster movie is the kind of programming choice that tells you what the week is going to be like.

Resident Evil lands the night before it opens

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil gets a gala screening on September 17, one day ahead of its wide release. Austin Abrams stars as a medical courier caught in the Raccoon City outbreak. Playing a studio tentpole to a Fantastic Fest crowd the night before it hits multiplexes is a calculated move, and if it works, the room will do a lot of the marketing for free.

Walter Hill gets his due

The festival is honoring Walter Hill with a special presentation of Extreme Prejudice from 1987, the neo-Western with Nick Nolte as a Texas Ranger squaring off against Powers Boothe as the childhood friend who became a drug lord. It is not a horror film, and it does not need to be. Hill’s influence on how genre pictures are built runs through most of what plays at this festival.

The rest of the week

Synthpunk band Drakulas plays the opening party. There is an Evil Laugh Competition, live podcast recordings, and a conversation with Rotten Tomatoes on the schedule. GWAR closes the whole thing out with a concert, which is either the only reasonable way to end this festival or a warning about the state of the front rows.

Fantastic Fest has spent two decades as the place where a lot of horror finds its first real audience. The 2026 slate leans on that reputation, mixing a Sony release with emerging filmmakers and restored older work across the same eight days.

Source: JoBlo.